There are numerous ETFs that now track everything from countries, commodities, currencies and stock market indices to individual market sectors.  ETFs provide a wonderfully easy way to discover what’s happening in the world markets.  Consequently, I now apply a version of my System Quality Number® (SQN®) score to measure the relative performance of numerous markets in a world model. 
The Market SQN score uses the daily percent change for input over a 100-day period. Typically, a Market SQN score over 1.45 is strongly bullish and a score below -0.7 is very weak. The following color codes help communicate the strengths and weaknesses of the ETFs in this report:

• Green: ETFs with very strong Market SQN scores (0.75 to 1.5).
  
• Yellow: ETFs with slightly positive Market SQN scores (0 to 0.75).
  
• Brown:  ETFs with slightly negative Market SQN scores (0 to -0.7).
  
• Red: Very weak ETFs that earn negative Market SQN scores (< -0.7).
  

The world market model spreadsheet report below contains most currently available ETFs; including inverse funds, but excluding leveraged funds.  In short, it covers the geographic world, the major asset classes, the equity market segments, the industrial sectors and the major currencies. —VT

World Market Summary
Each month, we look at basically all the markets in the world by asset class, segment, region, and sector. This month, we see mostly green in the summary below with some yellow as the secondary color.  In the US, the only segment not green is DIA, the Dow Jones Industrials ETF.  Europe and Africa are all green with the lone yellow exception in Sweden.  Asia has a mix of both good and mild strength with China showing exceptional strength for the last 100 days.  In the Americas, Latin and South America show only mild strength with Chile presenting the only negative country score in the entire model.
From a sector standpoint, we see again mostly green and some yellow.  Aerospace & Defense has the strongest score not only for the sectors but also for the entire database this month.  Other very strong sectors include media, gaming, biotech and consumer discretionary.  With the quiet market volatility recently, VXX, a volatility ETF, is quite weak and is the only red instrument in this section. 
Currencies, on the other hand, show much less strength than equities.  Here, there’s a fairly even split between brown and yellow with the Chinese Yuan being the only sign of good strength.  The Canadian Dollar and the Japanese Yen are the two weakest currencies. 
Commodities, Real Estate, Debt, Top and Bottom Lists
The next chart shows real estate, debt instruments, commodities and the top and bottom ETFs for the past 100 days. 
Commodities are now showing a broader mix of performance as opposed to the last few months when much of the category was completely brown and red.  Energy and metals related ETFs are generally bearish or neutral with natural gas continuing to be the weakest.  Steel shows the most strength, followed by timber and water.  
Real estate went from all brown and red last month to all being neutral to bullish in October. 
As for bonds, it seems like the longer the duration, the weaker the Market SQN score.  Across the board, however, the bonds category’s Market SQN scores have come up — they all had very bearish or bearish scores for the last few months.  Short term bonds and T-Bills are actually positive this month. 
In the top market SQN scoring ETFs, no one group dominates the list.  Aerospace, China, industrials, tech, and media make up the top 5.  For the weakest scoring ETFs, we mainly see inverse or short funds on the list — which is no surprise given equities performance over the last 100 days.  You can see several China-related issues, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, and biotech.  The weakest list includes a large number of debt issues. 
Summary
Van’s newest table measures the percentage of ETFs in each of the strength categories.  Nearly half of the ETFs are in the bullish range.  The very bullish percentage is the highest it has been in four months, while the very bearish percentage is at the lowest level it has been at since Van started tracking these figures at the beginning of the year. 
What's Going On?
You can see that October brought green scores to the majority of ETFs in the world market model at the beginning of this article.  The numbers in the summary table just above reveal a similar situation for the whole database. 
As we look back a few months in the summary table just above, you can see a strong performance on a 100-day basis from the overall database coming out of last winter and through the spring.  Then, the average Market SQN score for the database shifted to neutral over the summer and the distribution expanded more evenly across the ranges.  In August and September, nearly half of the database consolidated in the neutral Market SQN zone.  In October, there was a noticeable shift — about 60% of the ETF database now scores in the bullish and very bullish ranges.   
The markets always offer opportunities, but to capture those opportunities, you MUST know what you are doing.  If you want to trade these markets, you need to approach them as a trader, not a long-term investor.  We’d like to help you learn how to trade professionally because trying to navigate the markets without an education is hazardous to your wealth.

All the beliefs given in this update are my own. Though I find them useful, you may not.  You can only trade your own beliefs about the markets.